Home Invasion Victim Recalls Struggle, Fear

Neither the glint of the knives nor the thud of a pistol on his skull preoccupied Mark Strait after the men forced their way in.

It was thoughts of his young daughter that saw him through, he said Friday.

The robbery Thursday began with a simple question from men asking Strait, a handyman who works out of his house, for odd jobs. But it has left police without answers as they search for three armed men who barged into the spartan home about 5:15 p.m. and made off with a few thousand dollars half an hour later.

Strait tried to escape his Patricia Avenue home a couple of times. His lanky frame--marked with scrapes, bruises and cuts--bears testament to his struggles. After finally fleeing to a neighbor’s house, he was treated in the emergency room of Simi Valley Hospital, where he received stitches in his little finger and the back of his head.

“Through it all, I kept thinking of my 4-year-old daughter: ‘She’s going to grow up without a daddy,’ ” he said. “If I was to die, I figured that was my way to go. If I was to live, then that was God’s plan.”

So far, police have no leads or suspects in the home-invasion robbery, said Sgt. Bob Gardner of the Simi Valley Police Department.

After a call from Strait’s neighbors, seven Simi Valley officers and K9 dogs searched the area for the men, who were armed with knives and a small-caliber gun. A Sheriff’s Department helicopter scanned the neighborhood as well.

There are usually only a couple of home-invasion robberies in Simi Valley a year, Gardner said. A similar robbery took place in October and police picked up three suspects not long afterward.

Gardner said the case is a reminder that even Simi Valley, ranked safest by the FBI for cities of 100,000 or more residents, is not immune from crime.

“Yes, we’re the safest city because we have a very low crime rate,” he said. “But we are not crime-free.”

Casting a wary eye out his front window, Strait stressed the same point.

“We always have to be cautious and not be overly trusting of people,” he said. “You need to really make sure your door is secure and you really know what’s out there.”

Strait said he should have been more alert Thursday night.

But he was in a hurry to get to a Christmas party at his daughter’s preschool. After showering, Strait was dressed in his boxer shorts and lathering his face for a shave when he heard a knock at his door.

Two men asked for work but Strait told them he didn’t need any help.

“I said, ‘Why don’t you grab a pen and write down your names?’ ” Strait recalled. “They said something like, ‘No, you go get a pen.’ And they followed me inside.”

That is when Strait knew he was in trouble.

Suddenly, he saw weapons. The men wanted money. They seemed to think Strait--who recently closed a big roofing business after financial trouble--would have some.

Adrenaline pumping, Strait scrambled toward the front door. But the men came at him with fists and knives. For a moment, he wrestled the gun away. He tried to fire it, but nothing happened. Then he lost the gun.

“I thought I was just going to be shot,” he said. “I thought, ‘While you’re in here, why haven’t you shot me or stabbed me?’

“As much as you’re scared, you’re also angry at the fact that you’re in this darn predicament,” he said. “ ‘How did you let these son-of-a-guns in the house?’ If I had taken that extra second to size up the situation, I wouldn’t have opened the door.”

Strait was only dimly aware of a third man entering. At that point, someone bashed his head with a gun, and the men gagged him and bound his wrists with duct tape. They wrapped a belt around his ankles. They shoved him into the back office and ordered him to open his business safe. He didn’t want to die. He was missing his daughter already.

When ordered to open the safe, Strait asked for a guarantee: a promise, on Jesus’ name, that the men would not kill him. They swore not to. Strait prayed, then opened the safe.

“I said, please, by Jesus, don’t hurt me,” he recalled. “It was the only thing I could think of that might appeal to their sense of . . . fairness. Something they could appreciate, that they could relate to. It was my only weapon at that point.”

It served him well.

The men left. Strait chewed through duct tape until he could free himself and scramble to a neighbor’s house.

Though battered, sore and poorer, Strait was not seriously hurt. A wind rattling the house makes him leap to check the back door, but Strait said he would venture out Friday night--to see “Flubber” with his daughter and friends. And maybe drink a beer.

“Things happen in your life that make you stronger . . .,” he said. “I think the wrong approach is selling the house and running away.”